


when your friendships are a clusterf^ck because everyone wants to f^ck

by ang3lba3



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Accidental Self Harm, Depressive States, M/M, Malnutrition, Multi, Polyamory, Post-Sburb/Sgrub, Recreational Drug Use, bipolar, past self harm, past suicide attempts, unhealthy eating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-04
Updated: 2016-04-04
Packaged: 2018-05-31 03:28:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6453589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ang3lba3/pseuds/ang3lba3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been 250 years since the end of the game, and while being Gods of this new universe is fun for the trolls and humans of all relevant sessions, it's not quite enough for three lovesick idiots.</p>
            </blockquote>





	when your friendships are a clusterf^ck because everyone wants to f^ck

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dr33g](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dr33g/gifts).



> on tumblr at [this gorgeous blog ;)](ang3lba3.tumblr.com)

**BE DAVE ==== >**

 

“Yo, shitbag, we’re here,” Karkat yells as he bangs on Sollux’s door. The ‘yo’ is strictly from hanging out with you for too many uninterrupted days of sightseeing in space, and you are inordinately proud of your influence on Karkat.

Chances of Sollux answering are a solid twenty five to one, even though you talked to him not five minutes ago, so you pick the lock before Karkat can break down the door.

True to expectations, Sollux is sitting in his red briefs with the blue waistband in front of his computer, wearing noise cancelling headphones and no doubt having completely forgot the conversation where Karkat told him in no uncertain terms that you were visiting.

You stand back and watch as Karkat does his best to sneak up on Sollux - which is not very good at ALL, two hundred years of time traveling and he still couldn’t figure out how not to sound like an angry elephant when he walked. Or are they called pinnochio in this era? You can’t remember. The 7,000’s got kind of weird, but Sollux wanted to live in the peak of the technological era so here y’all are.

Karkat blows air onto the back of Sollux’s neck and Sollux fucking falls out of his chair screaming and you almost pee yourself laughing.

That never gets old, and there sure as fuck had been enough time for it to.

 _Time,_ you think as you watch Sollux and Karkat start cussing each other out. That’s certainly something you have no shortage of - 250 years after you won Sburb to the day and you’re all still going strong.

The word ‘strong’ makes you think of Equius, and you shudder. Last you knew, he was convinced by Meenah to use his sweat to make vanishing cream. Shit worked, but it was _disgusting._  

You’re also frozen in the body you had when you won the game which… honestly sucks. You’re luckier than most of the rest of the gang, having hopped around in time so much during the game that you were at least 18 physically. If you weren’t a god (and damn proud and historically loud about it), you probably wouldn’t be able to get alcohol in some eras without being laughed out the store. 

You tune back into the conversation just when they’re doing their lame ass apologies and questions about still being friends. This happens every single goddamn time, a more reliable constant in paradox space than Juggalos. 

“We’re-still-friends-right?” Karkat said, making up for the anxious edge to it by saying the words smushed together like two colors of Play-Doh, blending until they’re almost unrecognizable from their original definitions and forming something new.

“Duh,” Sollux says. He stands up from where he hadn’t bothered to get up after falling, and squeezes Karkat’s shoulder awkwardly, pulling his hand away too fast and putting it on a little too hard.

You cough to get their attention and point to the Microsoft Square and Google VR Goggles.

“You ready to fucking get destroyed in Luigi Kart?” you say, raising an eyebrow in challenge.

They apparently are, and you lose every single game.

Every. Single. One.

 

**BE SOLLUX ==== >**

 

Karkat can’t sleep.

Or at least, he never sleeps well, so he chooses to fight it for as long as physically possible. When he finally does go down, he sleeps fitfully, jerking awake every ten minutes or so with a scream. Part of the reason that they’re over at your place so regularly, you think, is that Karkat doesn’t feel safe enough to sleep anywhere else.

So here you and Dave are, sitting in front of Karkat’s recuperacoon, shirts off to avoid getting slime all over your clothes and waiting for him to try and force himself conscious again.

He starts thrashing and whimpering, and you glance at Dave since it’s his turn - not that you wouldn’t do it every single time, of course you would Karkat is your… best friend - but he’s already on it. Dave bends over the recuperacoon and shooshes Karkat, gently stroking his face and saying a constant stream of soft words that you can’t quite make out.

It’s so pale it hurts inside your chest.

The extreme amounts of vacillation Karkat put himself through (and the characters in his novels) used to seem far fetched to you, peculiar. But watching Dave soothe Karkat back to sleep, you can’t help how much you want it. You’d jacked off not even six hours ago thinking of strifing with them, and now you want nothing more than to drag them both into a pile and wrap around them.

God, crushes were horrible.

You had to keep telling yourself this was just a crush. That it would go away. It wouldn’t, and it hadn’t, and it had been about 150 years, but a troll could _dream_ okay?

Dave’s voice raises a little so that Karkat can hear it over his own whimpers, and you freeze at what you hear.

“It’s okay, I love you, I’m not going anywhere, shhh, you can sleep.”

Karkat’s hand shoots up out of the sopor and cradles Dave’s arm to his chest for a moment before going lax in deep sleep.

Dave sits back down next to you, grimacing at his slime covered forearm.

“Hand me the towel, would you?” he asks, reaching out a hand expectantly.

You cough violently, and hand him one of the pile of towels you keep on hand. (Super absorbent and self cleaning, another enterprise of Meenah. It was originally to keep Equius from sweating all over her stuff when they were roommates, but he wasn’t allowed to use them now what with the vanishing cream. Instead he used super absorbent sponges that stored up to a gallon of liquid. Watching Meenah make him sweat was actually the funniest thing you’ve ever seen. You’re at least 1000% sure he’s come in his pants at least once from her ordering him around, and you have your suspicions about the future of those poor ruined pants.)

“I,” you start. Stop. “You like Karkat?”

Dave gives you a weird look. “Of course I like him. He grew on me like a particularly virile fungus.”

“No - um. You know what? Nevermind.”

Your head is reeling for the next ten minutes, but it flies out of your mind when Karkat jerks awake screaming and it’s your turn to care for him.

 

**BE KARKAT ==== >**

 

This latest novel is coming out great, and you know it. 

It’s the perfect amount of pervertedly edgy, a trait that your novels have become known for. A love triangle between a human and two trolls that ends up transcending the quadrants as they all engage in the weird disgusting mess of vacillation combined with human romance. 

Rose raised her eyebrows sky high when you pitched her the idea, but of course she jumped on it. You’re the biggest paperback author for Elder Horrors Enterprises, people will throw money at anything you write. You once wrote and illustrated a NSFW mock children’s book, and amazingly, people bought it.

People willingly paid for _your art._

Sometimes you impress even yourself.

But that’s neither here nor there in your steadily growing self esteem. What _is_ relevant currently is the way Dave seems to be insisting you go on yet another Indiana Jones-esque adventure.

“Fuck no,” you spit, pointing defensively at the cast on your arm. “When did this cast get put on?”

“It could be healed in twenty minutes if you let me take you to the ER!” Dave says, an annoyed edge working its way into his usually flat tone.

“I don’t want fucking skelegrow rubbed on my arm that shit hurts worse than it does to fucking break it,” you say. “Besides, we were literally _just_ in the ER.”

 _“Ugh,”_ Dave says, and sits down, back to the wall of the outside of the hospital building. “Not this one, any one from 2555 up and you know exactly what I was saying you little shit, don’t lie.”

You open your mouth to yell something at him, but a camera clicking sound and a flash of light distracts you. You turn to glare at the teenage girls huddled over their cellphones. One gasps loudly, and shit.

Shit.

“Fuck you and your stupid fucking adventures,” you hiss at Dave. “We can’t go anywhere without people taking pictures!”  

The last bit is aimed pointedly at the girls, but they just giggle excitedly and take some more. Dave and his escapades had given you both some sort of weird part superhero part celebrity for some reason ALL approachable vibe. Your book signings probably didn’t help with that, actually. 

“Take me to Sollux,” you say threateningly.

Dave looks not at all impressed, but after a moment of steady glaring and increasing tension he rolled his eyes and grabbed your wrist - and then there was that familiar freeze before the fast forward. 

The atoms of your body move so fast as you accelerate through time they separate, bouncing frantically in their former _(rightful)_ positions. Going forward in time is always like this, the unbearable feel of your body coming apart and rearranging itself just a little bit different when time resumes its normal schedule.

Dave doesn’t go through this, or maybe he doesn’t notice. Maybe having Time as his aspect holds him above the discomfort, makes it feel natural. Makes it feel _good._ You think it does, a little _too_ good, judging by the way he fiddles with the hem of his hoodie when you land.

200 years is a long time to learn someone’s tells, and you know Dave’s better than you know your own.

(It gives you that peculiar combination of irritation and _want_ that you’ve come to associate with Dave. If you were letting yourself associate things with him. Which you weren’t.)

But that’s neither here nor there, because you’re blessedly, blessedly at Sollux’s (at _home)_ and nothing can bring down the buoyancy of being safe. Not even the senseless psychosomatic burn in your cells.

Time travel doesn’t mean travel through space, however, so there’s still the annoying business of finding a relatively secluded area to use the teleporter Jade and Roxy had gotten their heads together to make. Relatively secluded area not being hard to find, as thousands of years later the thriving city you’d been in (relatively speaking) twenty seconds ago was a disgustingly idyllic forest.

You couldn’t help but think that Bambi was going to pop out from behind a tree any moment, and you give a disgusted huff when a bunny hops its way into your view and then back out again.

Nature.

It’s fucking disgusting.

 

**BE NOT SO FUTURE AND IN FACT A LIL BIT PAST SOLLUX ==== >**

 

You’re not sure you’re okay. In fact, you’re not sure you’ve been okay since you heard Dave say _I love you._

Because. It wasn’t - 

It wasn’t fair that you fell for both of them. That when they found their way together, as they most certainly would (Karkat acted so above it all despite his chosen profession, but you had a fucking _thinkpan)_ you’d be losing two people and not just one.

Even if there was a chance in the existence of everything that Karkat could ever feel anything towards you besides the most basic platonic emotions… Dave was still the clearly superior choice. Any kind of comparison would be laughably out of your favor. Even when you were manic, you had the common sense to know any chance with _either_ of them was slight to none. And mania wasn’t exactly known for ‘common sense’ or ‘realistic self esteem’.

So instead, you’re sitting in your ablution trap completely naked and crying.

Naked and in the ablution trap because it’s easier than trying to salvage tear soaked and tinted clothing, crying because you’re cycling into a pretty bad depressive period. And also because you’re a worthless piece of shit who hasn’t had a quadrant mate since literally before the creation of the universe, with no one you’re confident/desperate enough to approach about entering one. Who besides Cronus would ever consider _you?_

You can see your reflection in the glass of the closing door on the ablution trap, and it’s not pretty. Your face is covered in snot and tears, you never really grew up beyond that awkward phase that basic biology used to promise you would only suffer temporarily, and you’re all skin and bones because you haven’t eaten anything for the past two weeks besides the occasional quickly abandoned bag of increasingly stale chips. You can count the bones in your torso with barely any effort.  

Eventually it’s too hard to hate yourself effectively with the distorted image in the pebbled glass, and you drag yourself out of the ablution trap with heavy limbs to stare in the mirror.

It’s less than ten seconds before you have to look away, or do something drastic. Your skin is covered in scars from ‘something drastic’, but before long you know if you stand there naked and dripping tears onto the floor any longer even without the mirror you’re going to-

It doesn’t matter what you were going to do, instead you pull on some underwear because it’s uncomfortable to flop around in the open air of your apartment naked and head out to where you stash the faygo and extra sopor mix. You probably shouldn’t be doing this - in fact, you are one hundred percent CERTAIN you shouldn’t be doing this - but getting real fucked up sounds good right now.

You grab some mountain dew and key lime pudding to add to the sopor mix, because it’s honestly the only way the acidic sweet tang is bearable. If you’re going to drink and drug yourself to death, then you might as well do it comfortably.

Not that you’re planning on dying. It wouldn’t be the first time, but you rarely went in _planning_ to anymore. Hopefully, if you did, you could recover privately without Dave or Karkat finding your body. Coming back to life was always unpleasant, quadruply so when you get punched in the face the second after you start breathing.

You grab a beanbag, drag it from its corner and plop it squarely in front of where the largest hologram will project, grab the supplies and your phone and tell the TV to set up a marathon of Alice in Wonderland movies. They’re your go to color porn, and you appreciate them all immensely.

Apparently, you don’t appreciate them enough to stop from crying again, but you’ve shoved some sopor in your mouth and the world is going hazy and sparking bright in the way that it does when you’re high.

In the one currently on the Mad Hatter is the main character, and murders everyone then kills himself. So maybe not the best choice when you’re this upset, because you end up curled up in a ball on the bag shivering and wishing for a blanket to block out the world with. You don’t dare turn the TV off, instead turn it up louder, try to drown out the voices in your brain and your own vicious thoughts.

It doesn’t work.

 

**BE DAVE ==== >**

 

You’ve just transportalized to outside Sollux’s door when your phone lights up. It’s from him, and Karkat leans over nosily. You don’t bother hiding it from him, because the next second Karkat’s phone lights up too.

“What the fuck?” he asks, and peers down at the text. You look at your own with an increasingly feeling of concern.

TA: ii ju2t want you two two be happy.  
TA: ii know youll make hiim happy.  
TA: he2 alway2 wiith you riight?  
TA: and iit wa2nt really liike ii ever had a chance.  
TA: ii mean, youre the oriigiinal cool guy.  
TA: you invented the hiigh fiive iin thii2 uniiver2e.  
TA: anyway2 that doe2nt matter  
TA: he obviiou2ly love2 you back  
TA: 2o go for iit, dont worry about me  
TA: ii mean why would you iit2 not liike ii liike hiim or anythiing  
TA: …  
TA: 2hiit  
TA: dont tell hiim ok  


“Why is Sollux giving me his blessing to marry you?” Karkat says.

You don’t know. You’re really not sure of anything, like how Sollux could have figured out you liked Karkat, and how he could be dumb enough to blab about it to your crush. And, for another thing, that _he_ liked Karkat.

Ok, you guess that wasn’t so much a surprise. What is more surprising is that Sollux thinks either of you have a chance with Karkat, who has taken his quadrants and hid them inside a huge fucking tower guarded by twenty dragons and innumerable booby traps. He may be considered the god of matchmaking in some cultures, but he holds onto his platonic relationships only rule with unflinching rigidity.

“He’s probably high,” you say, and tuck your phone back in your pocket, even when it buzzes against your palm. You don’t want Karkat to get nosey again and look over and see Sollux’s confession. That’s a can of worms you don’t need opened.

You reach for the door, and almost want to suggest that Karkat stays outside - even though that would never work. You’ve fallen into a sort of end zone, inevitable calm. The fact that you’re in love with Karkat is about to be spewed all over the walls along with whatever anxiety and depression induced bullshit Sollux vomits, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it short of gagging the guy. You’re not sure how you’re gonna talk yourself out of this one, and you realize that you don’t fucking _want to._ You’ve been in love with him for longer than any human on this goddamn planet has been alive, and you’re sick of hiding it.

Even if it means he’s weird around you for a while. He’ll get used to it, you’re sure of it.

(God, you hope you can be sure of it.)

 

**BE KARKAT ==== >**

 

What the shit motherfucking hell is going on? 

Okay, so that wasn’t your most creative set of curses, but Sollux is texting you like congratulations and permission to become the bride of Dave fucking Strider, and you’re honestly not sure what to do with it. He must be high off his head to be thinking that any of what he just said makes any sense. Which means that he’s probably in his underwear and crying on a beanbag with the TV blaring.

Well, only one way to find out, and you almost shove your phone back in your pocket as you wait for Dave to open the door, but then realize that you want to brandish it dramatically so you keep it tightly clutched.

Dave starts to do his customary jiggling with the lock, but frowns when the door slides right open - it wasn’t even completely closed, it just looked it.

Shit, that did not bode well for whatever meltdown Sollux was having.

“Sollux!” you yell as you barge in, shoving past Dave. Or, you would have shoved, but he knew well enough to step out of the way.

You forget all about your phone.

“Go away,” a cracking voice says, and you zero in on the pathetic figure curled up with his back towards you. His spine shows too clearly through his fragile, see through skin, and you hiss in frustration. He hasn’t been eating nearly enough calcium if you can see his goddamn veins fluttering under his skin - he’s as thin skinned as a human right now, probably has scratched himself with his claws twenty goddamn times already, not to mention what his mouth must be feeling like.

“You _idiot,”_ you say, but not as harshly as you usually would, crossing the distance between you to pull him up into a sitting position. He doesn’t fight it, but he’s limp as fuck and it’s hard to move him where you want him when he has lost the ability to support himself. Whether it’s because of mental or physical deterioration, you can’t tell. It doesn’t matter, anyway you put it, he’s so pitiable right now your blood pusher hurts.

Wait. _Stop._ Bad _._ **_No._ **

So instead of forcing him to sit up on his own you pull him back against your chest and arrange your bodies in a semi-comfortable position. He’s taller than you by about a mile, but with how slumped over he is it’s easy to glare down at the front of his body.

“You motherfucking moron, you’re scratched to shit,” you admonish. He doesn’t say anything, just stares dully into the distance. His eyes are bloodshot and his face has tear tracks stained into his skin.

You sigh, and look up to ask Dave to get the medical kit, but you two have been through this with Sollux so many times before that even as you’re opening your mouth he’s settling down across from you two and pulling out the antiseptic.

“What’s up with you, my man?” Dave says in a voice just a little too soft for his cool guy monotone. “Doing okay?”

Something seems to wake up in Sollux when Dave talks to him, and his eyes light up like someone flipped a switch. You wince a little at it, envious before you can control your reaction and remind yourself that you don’t feel that way towards anyone. He didn’t so much as look in your direction, but when Dave speaks he turns into a behemoth leaving on 12th Perigree’s Eve.

“You won’t tell him, right?” Sollux says, and his hand shoots out, grips Dave’s leg so hard that Dave grunts and his claws push pinpricks through the material.

“Course not. We’re chill,  you’re not gonna say anything, and I’m not gonna say anything, and we’re gonna get you all cleaned up and in a pile. Sound good?”

Okay, this is starting to get weird, and you are one hundred percent certain that they’re talking about you.

“What the fuck is going o-” you start, but Sollux talks over you, and does something that makes your breath stutter to a stop.

“No, it’s okay, I don’t mind if you have him, it was always going to be you, I mean,” Sollux reached the hand that was gripping Dave’s leg up, fingers impossibly thin and fragile and touch delicate where he strokes Dave’s cheek. “Look at me. You’re going to make him so happy.” Sollux’s breath catches, and he spits out something that looks like blood onto his lap. “Shit. Bit my tongue.”

Your body is a mess of confused signals. Pity rages through you, because he’s just - he’s so pathetic, and he _needs_ you. But there he is, papping Dave like it ain’t no thang and giving your body flashing tingles that burn under your skin from the casual pale voyeurism. Not that they’re properly pale, Sollux is high and he always gets grabby when he is, but this is close enough and you’ve had so little action in your life that it’s driving you insane.

“What do you mean, going to be Dave?” you rasp out.

(It would be hard not to pick up what he meant, but you’re scrambling for a universe where you don’t have to deal with Sollux have feelings towards you, which totally isn’t a thing.)

“He doesn’t mean anything,” Dave says in a firm tone, like that’s ever stopped you from doing whatever you were already doing. “No one’s going to be anyone’s.” 

“You don’t have to lie to me!” Sollux says, a weak, chittering growl in his throat that makes you freeze.

It’s so blatantly a caliginous mating call that you don’t even know what to say, or what to do with this information, but that’s okay, because Sollux keeps talking.

Or, at least, he tries to. Dave cuts him off almost immediately.

“I’m not lying to you! He doesn’t - we’re not, none of us are going to get what we want here, okay? And you’re high as fuck, so your opinion on any of this doesn’t even _matter,_ not that there’s anything to have an opinion on, because there _isn’t._ This is a fucking void zone of things to talk about. Roxy couldn’t get shit to talk about from this nothing, that’s how much nothing it is.”

There’s a silence, and then Sollux starts crying, great hitching sobs that wrack through him. He clutches to the arm you had wrapped around his waist to support him like it’s the last thing in the world that makes sense to him.

Dave’s face crumples from the anger to something far more defeated and guilty, and he presses his own hand against Sollux’s face in an unsteady, unsure waver. It makes Sollux cry harder, and he snatches it back, but when he does Sollux snatches it out of the air and pulls him back in.

“Fucking hell, Captor,” Dave mutters, but curls his hand around Sollux’s sobbing face and then his other one, wiping the tears away with his thumbs. It doesn’t matter, they pour out regardless and continuously. 

You. Don’t know what to do.

This is some pale proposal shit going on right here, and yeah, it’s always gotten a little borderline romantic when you’re taking care of him, but this is over the line and officially out of your comfort zone. Sollux and Dave, who knew, huh? 

Well. You thought _maybe,_ just because of the lack of other romantic contenders in the arena, but it sort of burns to see them like this. You’ve forgotten completely the nonsense they babbled that brought them here, but instead focus on the perverted pleasure spreading in your veins and the way it mixes with the deep pain of not getting either of them and how it’s no one’s fault but your own.

 

**BE DAVE ==== >**

 

You honestly don’t know what you’re doing. Like, yes, in theory, you realize that you and Sollux appear to be falling into a moirallegiance, but in a very more _real_ sense, you have no idea why you’re pressing his face down to your chest and getting troll tears all over your clothes. That shit stains. 

And it leaves you staring directly into Karkat’s eyes, which is a giant negative to the whole situation. But Sollux wraps a hand around your upper arm and clings there, and you figure it’s worth it if it calms him down. 

“Sup,” you say to Karkat, nodding nonchalantly. 

He doesn’t answer, which is kind of weird, because you feel like this would be a completely reasonable and almost irresistible opening to rant. So you look at him closer, and realize he’s…

The kinky son of a bitch is turned on.

Yep, that’s the look he gets when he’s reading a _good_ scene in a book, or, maybe more intense, like when he’s _writing_ one.

If there was ever a good time to proposition him, it would be this, and warning bells are flashing in your head like you’re in goddamn DEFCON 4 but it doesn’t stop you from removing a hand from Sollux’s head to touch Karkat. 

You start slow, at his shoulder, and he stares at the point of connection between your bodies like he’s dying. It’s a smooth, gradual stroke that could only be defined as a _caress_ that brings you up to his neck, and he makes a soft and completely involuntary purr in his throat when you graze your fingers over the exposed skin. He squeezes his eyes shut, head falling back so you can rub your hand over his neck freely. Karkat’s shaking, a steady trembling, body taut with tension.  

“Fuck,” you say quietly, too quietly to break the spell you have over him, and you’re not sure if this is pale or what for him, but it’s definitely crossing a few flushed lines for you. You wrap your fingers around his throat in a chokehold and he outright _moans._  

Shit. 

That’s about when you realize that Sollux has pulled back from you, mostly because he’s suddenly blocking your view of Karkat, and you lock eyes with him. You’re not sure what to say, so you do what you do best: a stupid thing without thinking about it. 

“How y’all feel about polyamory up in this bitch?” 

Karkat freezes up, purr stopping abruptly, and he wrenches himself away from your hand, breathing hard and eyes wide. Sollux is absently dripping snot onto the hand he’s using to cup the flow of blood from where he sliced open his lip, and doesn’t seem to understand quite what’s going on past the fact that Karkat is apparently into you. 

“I mean,” you start, “all of us. Together. In the gay way, not the bros way. Though the gay bros way is also acceptable. All the ways.”

“Um,” Karkat says, and he looks trapped.

“I’m in,” Sollux says, adopting his best hacker voice. It’s hard to really do a hacker voice, but you’ve heard this one so many times before that you recognize it immediately.

“Oh my fucking god,” you wheeze, trying so hard not to laugh that you can feel your face going red. “I’ve never loved you more.”

And oops, there’s the big word, and Sollux doesn’t look like he’s sure he heard it right. Karkat is still having a heart attack or an aneurysm or whatever he’s doing all shut up in his head over there. So you decide to run with it.

“Yeah, I mean. I love you. Both of you. Like, kind of a fucking lot, and for a while now,” you say, even though you really hadn’t known you were in love with Sollux until about a minute and a half ago. 

“And I want us to be together. Like Sappho and Katherine and Amy in your newest novel,” you say with a nod at Karkat.

“All the quadrants,” Sollux says quietly, and then breaks out in a disgusting, blinding grin. His teeth are stained from old blood and he obviously hasn’t brushed them in days.

It’s beautiful. You want to kiss him, feel that smile under your own lips.

“Yeah, exactly.” 

“Wait a second,” Karkat says, at his usual volume only amped up to eleven. So really not at his usual volume at all. “You want to… with me? And Sollux? _Both of us?_ ” He turns, accusatory, to Sollux. “And you’re okay with this?!”

Sollux nods. He looks like shit in most ways, but in all the others he looks genuinely the happiest you’ve ever seen him. 

“I - fuck, this is, this is wrong.” Karkat runs his hand through his hair.

“That’s not a no,” you point out, reckless with daring.

“It’s a. I don’t know what it is,” he admits.

A weird look comes over his face as he considers, and Sollux leans into you to watch him. You let him, wrap your arms around him, enjoy the coolness against your skin. Sollux isn’t as cold as a highblood would be, but he’s colder than you are by quite a few degrees. It feels good on your skin that burns hot with embarrassment and fear.

“Fuck it,” Karkat finally says, decisively, and for a second you’re afraid that he’s going to get up, that this is too much for him, that he’ll walk out the door and you and Sollux will be left trying to bridge the gap where he once glued you together.

Then he leans in, smashes his lips against yours - which, ouch, fuck, he’s legitimately never really done this before, has he - and everything is.

Okay.

 

**Author's Note:**

> on tumblr at [this gorgeous blog ;)](ang3lba3.tumblr.com)


End file.
